Australia is “a compliant partner, a strategic captive of the US,” says Fraser.

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He cites US blunders like the war in Vietnam and the second Iraq war and the needless mass deaths that followed and asks:

“Does Australia want to be tied to a power that can involve itself in such actions?”

The risk that the US could go to war with China, of Australia “being forced into a war that was not in our interest,” is so great that we have to “cut the ties” to America.

But for such a big provocation, Fraser’s proposal has attracted remarkably little attention.

This is partly because Fraser has long been dismissed as a post-prime ministerial convert to leftist causes.

He was, after all, the army minister and then defence minister who avidly supported Australia’s part in America’s ill-begotten war against Vietnam.

But the main reason for the great silence is that it is a distinctly uncomfortable idea for Australia’s political system.

The last mainstream political leader to challenge the sanctity of Australia’s US alliance was Mark Latham. No leader wants to be another Latham.

It’s easier for former leaders rather than current ones. Perhaps that’s why, while no serving leader is calling for a rethink of Australia’s relationship with its great and powerful friend, two former prime ministers are.

Paul Keating for several years now has urged a reconsideration.

Keating, too, is concerned at the emerging strategic rivalry between Washington and Beijing, and the possible consequences for Australia.

Keating cites what he calls “the Keating mantra” and that is: “Great states need strategic space and that if they are not provided some, they will take it.”

He wants the US to take a step back, to allow China to assert a bigger place for itself, which is exactly what it is doing, as its latest friction with Vietnam last week demonstrates.

But where Fraser urges Australia’s government to give up on the Americans altogether for fear of war, Keating wants Australia to try to change America’s ways to avoid war.

It’s the difference between the former lover who has written off the wayward ex, and the former lover who still thinks the ex can be reformed.

Keating wants Australia to try to shape the outcome of Sino-American rivalry.

But Fraser has taken a more extreme position, a position that now defines the outer limit of mainstream Australian debate.

Several of Fraser’s key observations are quite right. First, the US has made some dreadful blunders, the war in Vietnam and the second Iraq war foremost among them.

Second, Australia has been uniquely supportive even when the US is guilty of misjudgment, willing to follow the US into every major conflict since World War II.

Fraser writes: “While Australians believe that, for Australians, this is the best country in the world, we do not proclaim exceptional privilege and virtue for ourselves.

“We do not claim that we are endowed by God to bring justice and peace to the world. We do not automatically assume that what works in Australia will work elsewhere.”

He’s right that most of the senior Australian politicians of the past 30 years, in my experience, have been uneasy, in private, with America’s messianic tendencies.

Fourth, Fraser correctly points out the popular misconception of the nature of the alliance as a national 000 emergency line.

It’s a myth that the US alliance is guaranteed to bring assistance in the event that Australia comes under threat; it commits the two countries only to consult, no more. But Fraser then takes these accurate observations and draws two conclusions from them.

First, Fraser asserts that Australia has lost the capacity for independent decisions.

But it’s not true that Australia can’t make its own choices. Canberra has chosen to go all the way with the USA; Washington has not coerced it.

Fraser suggests that the close tactical intertwining of US and Australian forces is a set of strategic handcuffs.

Not so. Even the closest allies can come to different conclusions. Britain opted out of Washington’s Vietnam misadventure, yet their relationship survived and thrived.

From that flawed conclusion comes Fraser’s second and biggest misjudgment – that the only solution is to jettison the alliance altogether.

The alliance with the superpower is an asset for Australia to manage in its national interest. Fraser writes from the gut, not the head.

This is a peculiarly unwise moment for Australia to discard a major ally.

The Philippines broke off its alliance and expelled US forces 20 years ago; last week it signed an agreement to allow the US more freedom to operate in its territory.

Why? Because the Philippines, bullied by China, has realised it had no recourse but to yield to Beijing. Even the biggest powers, like Japan, are today reaching to the US for reassurance in the face of Chinese force.

No Australians want to see their country in a slavish alliance with America.

But the alliance is an advantage for Australia to draw on judiciously, to be neither followed obsequiously nor discarded rashly.

Peter Hartcher is the international editor

58 comments

Heh. What Australia wants is irrelevant. This country sits in what is now a more strategic position than ever. If you think the US will allow you an anti-US govt then you must have been asleep in history class. Look at what happened to Rudd when he started cosying up to China. Gillard rolls him with the help of the US spy Arbib and then grants the US a military base in Darwin. That's the way the world works.

Commenter

Nicho

Location

Sydney

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 3:42AM

Fraser is a fool. If he was a politician today he'd be in the Greens Party.

Commenter

Flanders

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 4:56AM

The only interest Malcolm Fraser ever served was his own, as a Liberal he undermined his leader, as the leader of the opposition he undermined Australia's established democratic process to further his ambitions. And when he finally achieved his ambition to be PM, he just sat there.

His attempt to rewrite his role in his history as a newly baptised Green is his business, but there is no reason why the security of Australia should join him in the dustbin of history simply so he can ingratiate himself at public expense one last time.

Commenter

SteveH.

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 5:10AM

I'm thinking you might be being a little too cynical Nicho, and I'm not averse to a healthy degree of cynicism myself. All we need are politicians with a degree of self respect and independence, able and willing to define ourselves as friends and allies to the US, not nervous boot kickers, too afraid to say no when its in our, and frequently also the US's interests to be argue against instead of for some of their more foolish notions or plans. For us to have been involved in Iraq, and promulgated patently absurd WMD allegations/fantasies, was our disgrace. Friends tell friends when they're carrying on like idiots but back them when in reasonable need We must do the same. Self respect engenders respect from others. No one respects the dweeb who says yes no matter what. Brings to mind our idiotic purchase of a few dozen used, and useless to us, Abrams tanks actually. By one current Abbott minister in fact. Andrews I believe.

Commenter

Warwick

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 5:14AM

Eh, we can do without the nutty conspiracy theories. Rudd's conduct toward China hardly showed him as a Manchurian candidate.

Commenter

Simon

Location

Sydney

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 7:12AM

@ Steve H

Really, who takes any notice of a man, well stricken with the years, who has never gotten over the fact no-one else shares his grandiose opinion of himself. But you left out the fact that he also knifed John Gorton and Billy McMahon as well as Billy Snedden. His loyalty to his attack dogs, like St John, was zilch. As soon as he moved into The Lodge his loyal supporters were quickly forgotten. Gorton hated him with such intensity that he campaigned for Gough Whitlam in 1975.

Fraser had a visceral loathing for John Howard because Howard dismissed him as an irrelevant crank. Then, when Abbott gained the Liberal leadership, Fraser thought he could play the Grand Old Man of the Liberal Party and "guide" the new boy - but to Fraser's immense chagrin, Abbott also told him to take a hike. That's when he decided to become a Green.

Like a lot of rich kids in the halcyon days of the post-war years, he went to Oxford, swanned around for a few years gaining a third-class Degree (actually a failure) and became a character from an Evelyn Waugh novel. No doubt he was, like the Cambridge Five, exposed to Communist thinking on that green-lawned campus and took up the cause of all the people whose lives he was never going to share and about which he knew nothing and whose desires and wishes were irrelevant compared to his own ego and messianic insights.

His rise to power was over the trashed careers of his colleagues and his time as PM was the greatest fizzer in Australian political history. Every political party has its rotters and rats and Fraser is the Liberals shining example.

Fraser's recent opinions are as worthless as was his Prime Ministership.

Commenter

Jack Richards

Location

Snowy Mountains

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 7:40AM

Australia cannot defend itself and needs USA. Thus I propose that it is time Australia urges US to build up a big military base in Darwin similar to Okinawa.

There is a looming critical food crisis in Asia which can break out before 2050. This is caused by two factors. i) Global warming leading to massive crop failures. The hot summer of 2012 which destroyed much of US corn crop is a sample. The corn in US can feed 300,000,000 people. Lucky it is used mainly to produce biofuel otherwise it would have had a major impact on global food supply. ii) Exponential global population growth at 24,000,000 every two months. IPCC recent reports support the above predictions. IPCC reports states that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced by global warming.

When Asia descends into total chaos Australia will need USA to defend it.

Commenter

Dr B S Goh

Location

Australian in Asia

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 10:20AM

It turned out that Latham was spot-on though, when he described GW Bush as probably the most dangerous and stupid president the US has ever had.

...and now we have our own version GW Bush in charge of Australia.

Commenter

MacNamara

Location

Cooktown

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 4:47AM

What must be membered about Malcolm Fraser was that he was elected as PM because he wasn't Gough Whitlam. Secondly, Malcolm Fraser could never be accused of being a Rhodes scholar. Thirdly, he cashed in his parliamentary pension and became a name at Lloyd's with disastrous financial consequences. he also supported the overthrow of the Smith regime in Zimbabwe with disastrous consequences. Malcolm Fraser likes to enunciate fine principles. He is very short on pragmatic solutions.Countries such the Philippines appealed to populist feeling to reject the USA influence. But the government is so weak that it can't even control its own internal security. Beijing can see this and knows that they are a pushover.History shows that countries which seek to follow an independent line between great powers generally simply become collateral damage. West Papua and Timor leste are classic examples. The fact that Timor leste now has independence does not take away twenty years of suffering. History is best understood in centuries. How many people know that the Moghuls ruled most of India much longer than the British did. How many know that most slaves from Nigeria were rounded up by the more powerful tribes. The kidnapping of the girls in Nigeria is not an aberration but a continuation

Commenter

Mark

Location

Turramurra

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 4:48AM

@ Mark:

['Secondly, Malcolm Fraser could never be accused of being a Rhodes scholar.']